To the Healers Who Won’t Turn Inward You learned the language of wounds by listening to everyone else bleed. You memorized the weight of grief that wasn’t yours because it felt safer to carry than your own. You are excellent at tending fires that didn’t start in your chest. You show up with water, with patience, with words polished smooth by practice. Everyone calls you strong. No one asks what you’re avoiding. You call it compassion. And it is. But it is also a hiding place. You learned early that if you stayed useful, you stayed needed. That if you were fixing someone else, no one would ask what was broken in you. So you sit beside pain like it’s a job you were hired to do, nodding, steady, composed while your own ache waits quietly in a room you refuse to enter because you’re afraid it won’t let you leave. This isn’t a condemnation. It’s an invitation. You don’t have to resign from caring to turn toward yourself. You don’t have to abandon others to stop abandoning you. The same gentleness you offer freely is not wasted on your own scars. The same patience you give strangers will not collapse if you use it inward. You are allowed to sit down without an emergency to solve. You are allowed to be unhelpful while you learn the shape of your own hurt. There is nothing selfish about finally asking who you become when no one needs saving. Lay your tools down for a moment. The world will survive. But you might finally meet the part of you that’s been waiting to be held instead of handled.